Pacific Gas and Electric Co. can continue paying its natural gas suppliers, even as other creditors wait to recoup billions of dollars from the bankrupt utility.
A federal bankruptcy judge decided Wednesday that PG&E can use hundreds of millions of dollars in payments from customers to buy gas, which the utility in turn sells to homes and businesses.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali made that decision at a hearing into the Chapter 11 case PG&E filed April 6. Montali also ruled that creditors lining up to collect from PG&E cannot use any money they secure to sue the utility's largest creditor, The Bank of New York.
Montali's courtroom has become the arena in which competing creditors spar for what assets remain at debt-deluged PG&E. On Wednesday, Montali took up two key issues.
First, he decided that PG&E could keep buying heating and cooking gas from 16 special suppliers. That decision will allow the utility to keep supplying gas to millions of customers in Northern and Central California. In March, for example, PG&E reported buying $167 million worth of gas.
Montali also resolved an issue concerning The Bank of New York, to which PG&E has said it owes $3.5 billion in secured debt and $2.2 billion in unsecured debt. Lawyers for the bank worried that competing creditors could win money from PG&E and then use it to challenge the bank's claims on PG&E in court.
PG&E lawyer James Lopes said The Bank of New York holds a claim on
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Dirk van Ulden said:
Dirk van Ulden said:
Dirk van Ulden said:
Rel - we are going in circles. Goodbye.
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